The Healthy Communities Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health in 2010, recently published findings in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that show comprehensive community policies and programs (CPPs) addressing childhood obesity are associated with lower child adiposity.

The study aimed to understand how diet, physical activity, and body mass index (BMI) are related to aspects of CPPs. Researchers recruited 5,138 children and their families in 130 demographically diverse communities across the nation from 2013 to 2015. In each community, study staff assessed the number and characteristics of CPPs implemented over a 10-year span through interviews with key informants and a document review. Children’s height, weight, waist circumference, demographic data, and background characteristics on nutrition and physical activity behaviors were collected by trained staff. To compare the CPPs between communities, an intensity score was developed to measure the strength of CPPs based on behavior change strategy, duration, and reach.

Study results suggest an association between communities with CPPs that targeted more distinct physical activity and nutrition behaviors and lower BMI and smaller waist circumference in children in those communities. The authors concluded, “Healthy weight among children is influenced by conditions that make it easier and more rewarding to engage in multiple behaviors related to physical activity and healthy nutrition.” Comprehensive CPPs provide conditions in which children can easily access and feel motivated to engage in healthy and active behaviors.

The Healthy Communities Study contributes to NCCOR’s aim to identify and assess the relationships between CPPs and childhood obesity, diet, and physical activity to inform public health practice. NCCOR supported the Healthy Communities Study during its development and application review phase because of its emphasis on multilevel and/or multi-component approaches that will strengthen the capacity (e.g., knowledge, skills, tools) to implement evaluations and interventions. NCCOR continues to address questions related to possible drivers and contributors that may be influencing the reported declines in childhood obesity.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is charged with making recommendations for clinical preventive services. The USPSTF recently reviewed the evidence related to obesity in children and adolescents and weight management interventions to update the 2010 screening guidelines. The statement, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), recommends that “clinicians screen for obesity in children and adolescents 6 years and older and offer or refer them to comprehensive, intensive behavioral interventions to promote improvements in weight status.”

The recommendation is based on evidence reviews, concluding that obesity screening and behavioral interventions of 26 hours or more in children over 6 years old led to improvements in weight status. The Task Force found little to no evidence that there are harms associated with screening for obesity and participating in comprehensive, intensive behavioral interventions. Body mass index (BMI) is identified as the appropriate screening tool.

NCCOR’s Engaging Health Care Providers and Systems workgroup works to engage health care providers and systems to bridge the gap between childhood obesity prevention research and interventions. The workgroup recently conducted listening sessions with pediatric weight management providers across the care spectrum including primary care, tertiary care, and community-based care. These sessions aimed to identify and disseminate best practices for the evaluation of family-centered childhood weight management programs. The workgroup is reviewing the findings and planning for next steps. The USPSTF recommendation provides a basis for researchers to work with health care providers to support programs aimed at reducing childhood obesity.

]]>NCCOR at the American College of Sports Medicine 64th Annual Meetinghttp://www.nccor.org/nccor-at-the-american-college-of-sports-medicine-64th-annual-meeting/
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NCCOR is traveling to Denver, Colorado, for the American College of Sports Medicine 64th Annual Meeting in May. More than 6,000 professionals from around the world will come together and share their latest research and innovations. The NCCOR booth (#125) will be in the exhibit hall throughout the conference. NCCOR will share new resources including the Measures Registry User Guides and teaching slides, highlights of our work on behavioral design, and a preview of the upcoming Youth Compendium of Physical Activities. Please follow us @NCCOR and use the hashtag #ACSM17 on Twitter to stay connected with NCCOR activities at ACSM.

NCCOR is also pleased to host a tutorial presentation at ACSM on Thursday, June 1, at 1:00 p.m. MT. David Berrigan, PhD, MPH, National Cancer Institute, along with Karin Pfeiffer, FACSM, PhD, Michigan State University, and Stephen Herrmann, PhD, Sanford Research—all members of the Youth Energy Expenditure Workgroup—will present Hot off the Presses: A Revised Youth Compendium of Physical Activities, a new NCCOR resource that will be released later this year.

The Youth Compendium of Physical Activities is a list of more than 200 common activities in which youth participate and the estimated energy cost associated with each activity. The Youth Compendium provides energy cost values for activities such as standing, doing household chores, playing active video games, playing and participating in games and sports activities, walking and running, and doing sedentary activities such as lying down or watching TV.

D-58 Tutorial Lecture: Findings from the First National Survey of the BuiltEnvironment
Thursday, June 1, 2017, 4:25-5:15 p.m. MT
David Berrigan, National Cancer Institute
Susan A. Carlson, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

E-04 Symposium: Device-Based Assessments of Physical Activity in Epidemiologic Cohort Studies: Early Findings
Friday, June 2, 2017, 9:30-11:30 a.m. MT
Janet Fulton, FACSM, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
John Jakicic, FACSM, University of Pittsburgh
Virginia Howard, University of Alabama at Birmingham
David Buchner, FACSM, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
I-Min Lee, FACSM, Harvard Medical School

More than 250 people attended both webinars. NCCOR’s post-webinar surveys suggest that respondents overwhelmingly agreed the webinars were a good use of their time (89 percent) and that they would recommend this webinar to a colleague or friend (85 percent). The majority of survey respondents were from academic institutions (49 percent), followed by government agencies (28 percent). Of the survey participants, 84 percent said they were either very likely or somewhat likely to use at least one of the Measures Registry User Guides. Most survey respondents indicated they would use them to select the correct measure for their research project (56 percent) or to determine tools and indicators for an evaluation project (51 percent).

NCCOR has released a new white paper on the use of behavioral design strategies and approaches to foster healthy eating and active living among children, teenagers, and their families.

Available on the NCCOR website, the white paper builds on a series of behavioral design meetings NCCOR hosted in 2015–2016 that brought together experts from a variety of fields, including architecture, environmental psychology, art, landscape architecture, human behavior, and philosophy and ethics. Meeting participants examined conceptual frameworks of behavioral design and their application to healthy eating and active living.

The white paper encourages childhood obesity researchers and practitioners to consider the role of behavioral design in their work and use it for research and practice. It examines how behavioral design is applied to the built environment and guides researchers and practitioners in using behavioral design methods to enable and promote healthy eating and active living among children. With this white paper, NCCOR plans to stimulate further discourse on the application of behavioral design.

Learn more! NCCOR is sponsoring a panel, “Healthy Places: Using Behavioral Design to Enhance Active Living and Healthy Eating,” featuring the authors of the white paper at The Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) conference from May 31 through June 2.

NCCOR’s recently released Annual Report 2016 explores how NCCOR has expanded its outreach in four areas: engaging new audiences; harnessing the expertise of members and advisors; convening experts from diverse fields; and creating tools and resources for researchers and practitioners.

Engaging new audiences

NCCOR reaches new stakeholders, researchers, practitioners, and health care providers through its highly successful Connect & Explore webinar series. These webinars provide information and insights on the latest developments and research findings in the field of childhood obesity research. In 2016, NCCOR held 11 Connect & Explore webinars—including in-depth multi-part webinars on topics such as Health Care Community Collaborations—and three livestreamed panels hosted by NCCOR during the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) 37th Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions.

The National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) has launched four Measures Registry User Guides to help childhood obesity researchers and practitioners choose appropriate measures for their research and evaluation efforts. The four User Guides focus on core areas of childhood obesity research: individual diet, food environment, individual physical activity, and physical activity environment.

The User Guides were created through a two-year grant from The JPB Foundation, NCCOR’s first strategic alliance partner. The project represents a continued commitment to encourage consistent use of high-quality, comparable measures and research methods across childhood obesity prevention research and evaluation efforts focused on diet and physical activity.

The User Guides build on NCCOR’s Measures Registry—a free, online repository of scientific articles about measures—widely recognized as a key resource that gives researchers and practitioners access to detailed information on measures in one easy-to-search location.

The User Guides provide an overview of measurement, describe general principles of measurement selection, present case studies that walk users through the process of using the Measures Registry and direct researchers and practitioners to additional resources and sources of useful information. The Measures Registry User Guides are available on the NCCOR website as easy-to-read webpages and downloadable PDFs. The Guides are written for both expert researchers and graduate students or practitioners who may be using nutrition or physical activity measures for the first time. The PDF versions can work as text for graduate-level classes, and teaching slides will soon be available.

“The NCCOR Measures Registry is a great resource, but the large number of measures can make it difficult for users to find what they want. The new User Guides are designed to improve the user experience through step-by-step directions,” said Jim Sallis, author of the Physical Activity Environment User Guide and member of NCCOR’s Expert Scientific Panel. “The goal is to help readers find—and use—measures suitable for their research or evaluation objectives.”

Each Guide was written by a team of leading experts. The Guides were also reviewed by expert panels in nutrition and physical activity (see authors and expert panels below).

“The User Guides provide in-depth discussions of each domain for researchers and practitioners. They will be enormously helpful to my doctoral students in making effective use of the variety of measures available in the Measures Registry,” said Alice Ammerman, a reviewer on the Nutrition Expert Panel. “The Guides will move the field forward by promoting more consistent use of measures, which will allow for more standardization and synthesis among domains.”

Stay Tuned! NCCOR will two host two webinars on March 29 and April 12, both at 2:00 p.m. ET, on the Measures Registry User Guides to provide an overview of each Guide and highlight key features.

In 2016 NCCOR expanded its outreach efforts, connecting with new audiences across the country to accelerate progress in reducing childhood obesity. NCCOR’s expanded outreach included more Connect & Explore webinars, an enhanced social media presence, exhibits at conferences, special-topic workshops, and a refreshed website. We worked with non-health partners on behavioral design issues, engaged healthcare providers and systems that work in childhood obesity prevention, and learned from retailers that collaborate with researchers to promote healthy options. The refresh of the NCCOR website at the end of the year allowed NCCOR to more effectively communicate research, products, and webinars. Through member meetings, workshops, conferences, Connect & Explore webinars, social media, and workgroup activities, NCCOR collaborated with 150 leading experts and reached thousands of researchers and practitioners.

Connect & Explore Webinars. 2016 was a monumental year for NCCOR’s Connect & Explore webinar series. In addition to the three live streamed sessions at SBM, NCCOR hosted a record number of eight Connect & Explore Webinars. This year Connect & Explore highlighted topics ranging from Health Care Community Collaborations, the SNAP-Ed Evaluation Framework, Assessing the Prevalence and Trends in Obesity, Declines in Childhood Obesity, and School Wellness Policies. Through these topics NCCOR expanded its audience to hospitals, insurers and payers, health care providers, SNAP-Ed implementing agencies, and school wellness coordinators. Overall, more than 3,500 people registered for this year’s webinars.

Workshops. In 2016 NCCOR hosted two workshops in the fields of behavioral design and healthy retail. The behavioral design workshop brought together a multidisciplinary range of experts to work toward applying behavioral design principles to healthier living, specifically as they pertain to healthy eating and active living. NCCOR members are working on refining a white paper on these principles to be released early next year. In addition, the Moving from Test Market to All Markets: Translating Food Purchasing Research into Evidence-based Strategies to Improve the Purchase of Healthier Items workshop brought together researchers, practitioners, and retailers working via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education Program (SNAP-Ed) and other public and private programs that promote healthy food purchasing by low-income consumers. This workshop allowed this group of experts to learn how they can work together to promote healthy food in the retail setting.

Conferences. NCCOR attended the Society for Behavioral Medicine (SBM) 37th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC and the American Public Health Association’s 144th Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. NCCOR livestreamed three SBM panel sessions via the Connect & Explore webinar series. The panels offered exclusive access to presentations from internationally renowned scholars, exploring high-impact childhood obesity strategies from around the world, including scalable physical activity interventions in Latin America; sugar-sweetened beverage taxes in Mexico, South America, and the United States; and approaches to eliminating health disparities among U.S. and international populations disproportionately affected by obesity.

Looking Forward. In 2017 NCCOR will continue to support researchers and practitioners with tools that help build the capacity for research and surveillance to accelerate progress to reduce childhood obesity. Stay tuned for the release of the four domain-specific Measures Registry User Guides and the Youth Compendium of Physical Activity in early 2017.

On December 5, NCCOR hosted a Connect & Explore webinar on Assessing Prevalence and Trends in Obesity: Navigating the Evidence. A consensus committee convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently explored how reports on obesity prevalence and trends differ and what these differences mean for interpretation and application. During the webinar, speakers presented insights from the resulting National Academies report and provided an overview of the various data collection and analysis approaches that have been used in developing reports on the prevalence and trends in obesity across population groups, but particularly as they relate to children and adolescents. Speakers included Shari L. Barkin, M.D., M.S.H.S. (Chair), William K. Warren Foundation Chair and Professor of Pediatrics, Director of Pediatric Obesity Research in the Diabetes Center, and Chief of General Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; Lynn Blewett, Ph.D., Professor, Division of Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health, Director, State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC); Jackson P. Sekhobo, Ph.D., M.P.A., Director of Evaluation, Research, and Surveillance in the Division of Nutrition of the New York State Department of Health; and Cynthia L. Ogden, Ph.D, M.R.P., NHANES Analysis Branch Chief/Epidemiologist, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The presentations generated many thoughtful questions, some of which the presenters were unable to answer due to time constraints. As a follow-up to this webinar, the presenters have answered all the questions the audience posed during the webinar.

Can you describe how you assess for disparities in the obesity prevalence data?

Dr. Lynn Blewett: Many of the major surveys, such as NHANES and BRFSS, often oversample different population groups. It’s important to check with your state on their sampling methodology.

Dr. Shari Barkin: To understand and assess disparities you have to be really clear about how you’re defining disparities and then consider the interaction among those variables in terms of age, sex, gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity. It seems like it should be a straightforward question, but it isn’t. You can look at those samples that have larger sample sizes, such as NHANES and BRFSS, because they oversample with the hopes of answering more of those questions.

On October 17, 2016, NCCOR brought together interested researchers, food retailers, and practitioners working via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–Education (SNAP-Ed) and other public and private programs that promote healthy food purchasing by low-income consumers to participate in a workshop to engage in dialogue and form working relationships to enhance each other’s work.

The workshop began with opening presentations by Katie Wilson, MS., PhD., Deputy Under Secretary for Food Nutrition and Consumer Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Mary Bohman, PhD., Administrator of the Economics Research Service, USDA. Following these opening presentations attendees listened to four sets of panels on topics covering the latest data from USDA’s National Household Food Acquisitions and Purchases Survey (FoodAPS), how retailers, researchers and practitioners can work together to achieve common goals, how healthy retail can be achieved under SNAP-Ed and other programs like Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matter’s at the Store, and additional resources and funding opportunities from various agencies and organizations.

Following the panel presentations, attendees came together to highlight their different perspectives and backgrounds to discuss how to move the dialog forward on research and its translation into evidence-based practice, promising opportunities for partnerships among researchers, retailers, and practitioners, as well as the value of partnerships to the retailers that make participating in research appealing.

Some takeaways from these small group discussions include:

Researchers should co-create research questions with retailers to obtain cooperation needed to conduct studies

Research questions and interventions need to be simple and straightforward in order for retailers to want to participate, (i.e. consider staff resources at the store)

Researchers need to speak the same language as retailers, so talk about surveys that are being done with customers as market research, etc.

Consider hosting a worksite wellness demonstration at a retail store as a way to begin to build a relationship with the retailer

Sales and the bottom line are the most important aspect to engaging retailers in these efforts; emphasizing the marketing benefits of having these kinds of initiatives is also important (i.e., stores can market themselves as the healthy option in their community)

Researchers/retailers need to be patient to see changes in sales data, as it can take about 6 months for a change in the store to demonstrate an outcome

Sixty percent of shoppers do not even go in produce section, so retail outlets need to place produce in cross-merchandised areas

Examples: bananas by cereal aisle, avocados near meat, soup mix (veggies) near meat section, strawberries near milk—all of these have been shown to increase sales of both items